Supermodel Liya Kebede On Her Calvin Klein Campaign, Philanthropy, And What Makes A Good Scent

Supermodel Liya Kebede is known for much more than being a pretty face—she’s been fighting for maternal healthcare for nearly a decade, and then there’s Lemlem, her artisan-driven fashion and home goods line that creates jobs for people across Africa. But she’s most famous for captivating the camera, and she gets in front of it once again, alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, for the new ad campaign for ETERNITY Air Calvin Klein. The pair of scents is meant to evoke juxtaposing shades of the atmosphere; the women’s is a fruity floral with notes of grapefruit oil, black currant absolute, sky of the sky accord, peony, pear accord, and a base of cedarwood oil, ambergris, and skin musk, while the men’s is a fougere featuring mandarin oil, juniper berry oil, sky of the sky accord, lavender oil, green apple, violet leaves and a base of patchouli oil, sea moss, and ambergris. Kebede tells us all about the campaign, her earliest scent memory, and the cause near and dear to heart.

Courtesy of ETERNITY Air Calvin Klein

Liya Kebede for the ETERNITY Air Calvin Klein campaign

What do you like about ETERNITY Air Calvin Klein? I love its lightness. I love that it smells very fresh. It’s feminine but not too feminine, so there’s an ambiguity to it that I like. It feels very perky; when I put it on in the morning there’s an energy to it.

What's your earliest scent memory? My earliest memory I would say is rain. When I was younger and living in Ethiopia, I remember the rain was very romantic to me and very refreshing. There’s a great change in your life. I used to love that.

What makes a good perfume? I think everyone has to connect personally to a fragrance. It depends on your mood as well; one day you’ll be into it and the next day you don’t want it but then the following day you want it again. So it’s quite an elusive thing. It’s challenging to choose your fragrance.

How do you connect to a perfume? It’s important to me how it ages on you during the day, how it evolves with you, because it starts in a certain way and ends up in a certain way. Does it stay super strong all day or will it fade a little bit and stay soft later? I love when it really gets into your skin. I also love people who wear the same fragrance all the time and you really associate them with that.

What has modeling taught you about fashion and beauty? What I learned is to stay true to you. Trends are not necessarily your best friend unless they really work for you and finding what really works for you is the key and essential.

Why did you found the Liya Kebede Foundation? I was approached by the World Health Organization to be a spokesperson for maternal health and at that time I had had my children already in New York. I come from a country, Ethiopia, where women died in childbirth all the time and it was a very normal phenomenon. I was really happy to put my voice forward for this cause when I was given the opportunity. From there my own foundation evolved and it’s been almost 10 years now that we’ve been doing it. We keep evolving.

Why is maternal healthcare such an important cause to you? The idea that mothers die during childbirth or during pregnancy because of very simple problems that are either easily preventable or treatable is not okay. Making sure that moms get basic medical care during these very fragile and precious moments is something that I feel is really, really important. A mother’s place in family is very crucial so everything we can do to save one person’s life makes a big difference, for her, for her children, for her family, for her community as a whole.

What's the most rewarding aspect of running the Liya Kebede Foundation? For me it’s seeing the little difference that you’re making, even if it’s on a really small scale. Knowing that you’re doing a little bit of your part in it is nice and as much as the problems are really huge and really big and sometimes it feels overwhelming, but then you get information about the little things that made a difference. It makes it worth it.

Why did you launch Lemlem? I started Lemlem abut 10 years ago. I was creating a solution to a problem that I found in the city that I was born in, which is Addis Ababa, where we have this community of weavers who were losing their market for all the beautiful craftsmanship that they were doing and so I thought that maybe I could give them a new market so they could continue to do what they do and also come on the international market as well and be able to produce things that are sellable on the international market with the quality and expectations. At the same time, it was for us also to learn about how things are done, how they do things, and then finding a middle ground for both of us to evolve together and that’s how we started Lemlem. Eighty percent of what we do is made in Ethiopia and hand woven by artisans, and then the rest is made in small factories across Africa.

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